Of Interest

I am still looking for an Eph willing to blog about Chris Murphy’s race for Congress on a regular basis here at EphBlog. Only two weeks left! In the meantime, here is an overview of the race.

If Curt Weldon is the safest of all Philadelphia-area Republicans, Nancy Johnson is the safest of all Connecticut Republicans. It is no coincidence that both of them are the most senior Republicans in their respective areas. Johnson won election to Congress in 1982 – an impressive feat, considering how rotten the results were for Republicans nationwide. She has had some close scrapes since them – most notably in 1996 when she barely won reelection. The closeness of that contest had to do with her relatively close relationship with Newt Gingrich. She was the chair of the House Ethics Committee when the Democrats brought charges against him.

She will face a touch challenge this year in State Senator Chris Murphy, who so far has done a superb job in the fundraising game. The 5th District – which occupies the northwest corner of the state and includes Danbury – is the most Republican in the state. Kerry only won it by 1,000 votes. Moveon.org entered this race early on with an attack on Johnson’s support of Bush’s prescription drug plan; this might have been a good thing for Johnson, who seems to have shaken off whatever rust that she’s developed in the 10 years since she faced a serious challenge. She has a reputation in the House as a moderate leader on health care policy, and she has been touting that in her reelection campaign. Good news for Johnson – in a recent Democrat-sponsored poll that was 40% D to only 28% R, she still had a 5% lead.

Murphy is up by 5% in a recent poll. Keep your fingers crossed. Even we non-Democratic Ephs would like to see Murphy in Congress.

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2 Responses to “Murphy ’96 Update”

Jeff Z. says:

David and I agree on this one (although to be honest, were Chris a Republican I would have a hard time picking which side to root for, Ephs or Dems. I just hope there are no Amherst-alum democrats running for Congress, that would cause some true angst).

This race was spotlighted today by Rolling Stone. Can you guess who they favor??? (Hint: the article is titled “Age and Treachery vs. Youth and Skill):

I recall Chris a little from his time on College Council (or perhaps it was FinCom) and I remember being impressed back in the day. If he can pull this race off (no easy task against someone with Johnson’s experience and savvy) I nominate him for Commencement speaker 2007.

By the way, there are a lot more reasons to support Murphy than his Eph status. In a year when republicans have used age-discrimination (Byrd campaign), race-baiting (Harold Ford and George Allen campaigns), gay-bashing (Hostettler campaign), attacks on candidates’ looks (Clinton campaign), unfounded conspiracy claims about the Foley news, threats to slap a guy in a wheelcheer (Wyoming), and threats to deport hispanics (California) in incresingly desperate and pathetic attempts to retain their majority and continue to screw the country up for two more years, Johnson’s campaign tactics fit right into the GOP norm.

Yeah, that Chris Murphy, he sures loves sex offenders and drug dealers, don’t he? I’d be surprised if the next ad doesn’t show an actor portraying the Murph (I have not heard this nickname but it is a “man law” that any man named Murphy shall be nicknamed “the Murph”) snorting coke and collaborating with sex offenders to lure children over the internet. Even better, let’s make the actor black and gay — yeah, that’s the ticket, Murphy is a black, gay, drug-abusing sex fiend, and he’ll raise your taxes to boot!

Of course, I guess I shouldn’t complain, Murphy was after all a member of the party that was so scared of bad pub that it turned a blind eye to a sex predator using his status as a Congressman to repeatedly score hot teenage action — oh wait a second, never mind.

Hopefully the voters are smart enough not to fall for this kind of garbage, but just in case the message that Johnson’s campagin claims are a total fraud still needs to get out, make a donation to Chris’s campaign today, I beg you.

If Obama can (please god) win the democratic primary, I can’t wait to see what Karl “Satan” Rove will come up with next — but I guarantee, 100 percent positive, that there will be some miscegenation or other racially-themed mailings (akin to what he used to knock out McCain in 2000) and phone bank calls in the south, only to be followed by the inevitable “oh I never endorsed that it must have come from some third party” and hypocritcal “denunciations” after the damage has been done from the candidate purporting to stay above the fray, because the GOP knows it has no chance against Obama without resorting to the usual dirty tricks.

The Dems are hardly perfect in their campaigning, but GOP tactics are completely out of control and Johnson is one of the worst offenders. I guess absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely. I just wish for once I didn’t live in a 90 percent blue area so my vote could actually make a difference.

And although there is no Ephblogger on the case for this race, I recommend this blog for some background reading: